Forum:Stub Templates

Forums: Index > Rin's Travel Agency > Stub Templates

		15:06, July 7, 2015 (UTC) Technobliterator Talk
		Okay, I've finally decided something should be done about our stub templates. My proposal is to either merge them into a single one (which I'd prefer), or metatemplate them. This is because I have seen, on many occasions, people needing to edit every single stub to make minor changes, when they all basically do the same thing. The difference between {{abil-stub}} and {{char-stub}} is...a category and an image. They serve the same purpose otherwise: to add the generic stub category (why do they do that, by the way?), to add the specific categorical stub category, and to add the specific game category. So why do we have millions of templates to do the same thing? Metatemplate proposal of this is nothing you haven't all seen before. That would involve creating a stub metatemplate, a stub module, and having all stub templates based on that. Merging them all, the idea I'd prefer, would involve using a single stub template and having the bot fix it. This would mean, instead of {{abil-stub|Final Fantasy VI}}, we'd have {{stub|abil|Final Fantasy VI}} or {{stub|ability|Final Fantasy VI}}. I'd prefer the latter because this way people don't know that it needs to be "abil" and not "ability" and because of less useless template serving basically the same purpose, but the other problem is that also involves a massive bot job and a slightly more complicated template. Then there's the switch for the image, I'm not sure how much faster Lua will make it, but the switch for the image would make a single stub's loading slightly slower. So while I'd prefer merging them, I'd settle for just a metatemplate. Metatemplating/merging also gives us the opportunity to improve them. An idea Kelt had was to allow a stub template to contain the reason that the stub is there, to contain what information is needed by hovering your mouse over the reason. This to me is a very good idea and saves needing <!--reason--> everywhere, and also, some stubs simply do not explain why they're there. So what do you lot think? Merge or metatemplate?

Support. Plus, I'd like for a third, optional parameter to also appear so we can specify what exactly is needed in regards to certain articles or their sections. It'd be much better than having the details shown in those hidden commentaries thing.—Kaimi (999,999 CP/5 TP) ∙ 15:17, July 7, 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, definitely. Demo of the idea; <code>{{abil-stub|Final Fantasy VI|reason goes here}}</code> leads to:

This article or section is a stub about an ability in Final Fantasy VI. You can help the Final Fantasy Wiki by expanding it. ^{(How? (reason goes here))}

Any good? I think "How?" is probably the best way to do it, or just a "?" or something.-- Technobliterator ^T_C 15:33, July 7, 2015 (UTC)

That sounds a little like general "how do I start editing" kind of beginner's advice, but I don't really have a better suggestion either.Keltainentoukokuu (talk) 16:44, July 7, 2015 (UTC)

Oh, yeah. How about...

This article or section is a stub about an ability in Final Fantasy VI. ^{(Why? (reason goes here))} You can help the Final Fantasy Wiki by expanding it.

?-- Technobliterator ^T_C 16:55, July 7, 2015 (UTC)

No, that doesn't look good. We usually would just do "expanding it with: {{{reason}}}".

Third parameter is probably a bad idea. Because a stub template can have a reason without being attributed to a specific game in our scope. I mean, we could still do it but we would still need a named parameter to use when a rel is not present.

Since we're meta-templating it, we can also have the rel parameter search to see if the parameter is a codename before searching elsewhere. So if it is a codename it can resolve itself to the full game name. We do use codenames in other places anyway. JBed (talk) 18:38, July 7, 2015 (UTC)

Only problem with "expanding with: {{{reason}}} is that it could end up with really long text, but as has been seen, the mouse hover idea doesn't work too well. I like the codename idea. If we go with numbered params, there may be a way to check if the parameter doesn't contain only the codename or only the game name to determine if it's for the reason or for the release, but either way I will end up making named parameters optional anyway.

Not sure if we're merging or metatemplating, but I imagine metatemplating is the less controversial choice, and people seem to be assuming it, so metatemplating it is.-- Technobliterator ^T_C 18:55, July 7, 2015 (UTC)